Fiction reviews: 'Lips Touch,' 'Flash Burnout'

Fantasy novels are typically hundreds of pages long. The common wisdom is that the length is dictated by the need to create a whole new world in the reader's mind.

Then how to explain Portlander Laini Taylor's wonderfully inventive "Lips Touch"? In a little more than 200 pages, Taylor creates three stories set in very different worlds, each inhabited by a girl facing a problem.

In "Goblin Fruit," a romance blooms between Kizzy and the new boy at her high school, who may or may not be a goblin. Kizzy exists in a world much like our own, but with a family that believes in vampires and the evil eye, buries their grandmother with a swan's wing and a stiletto knife, and knows never to eat fruit out of season.

In "Spicy Little Curses Such as These," Anamique is cursed in her crib. Anyone who hears her voice will die. She grows up mute, never knowing if the curse is true. But when she falls in love, she is tempted to speak her first words. Will they bring death?

Finally, in "Hatchling," the reader enters a world where the dreaded Druj live high in the mountains. While they look like people, one character warns, "[t]hey can hear the blood moving in your veins a mile away. They can smell the color of your hair in the dark. They're hunters, Esme, and they never grow old, they never die, and they can't love." The Queen of the Druj keeps a baby girl as a pet -- at least until the girl grows big enough to bear children of her own.

When the pregnant girl manages to escape, she gives birth to a daughter, Esme. Esme's mother thinks they have successfully hidden themselves from the Druj. But when Esme is 14, one of her eyes turns the ice-blue color of a Druj eye.

These three entrancing stories weave magic from folk tales, legends and the author's imagination.

Portland resident L.K. Madigan's first novel, "Flash Burnout," will appeal to teens of both sexes. Fifteen-year-old Blake -- who lives in a city that bears a strong resemblance to Portland -- has a pretty good existence. He's got good friends and a close-knit family, and he's in the throes of young love/lust with his first girlfriend, Shannon.

For a photography class assignment, Blake has shot a series of monochrome photos, which he shares with his classmate Marissa.

My favorite shot is the one that's most depressing: a woman, dressed all in black and gray, is passed out against the side of a dirty gray building. Even her pale arm looks dirty and gray, with a tattoo of a snake slithering down it. The only color in the shot is a streak of bright purple in her hair.

Marissa grabs that photo and holds it closer to her face. She gasps, a ragged sound that breaks through the murmur of other people. "That's my mom!"

As Marissa desperately searches for her meth-addict mom, Blake tries to help. But Shannon is threatened by his friendship with Marissa. As Marissa's problems pull her away from school and into darker and darker places, Blake has to decide whether he will follow -- and what love and friendship really mean.